


Landlocked Blues

by firebrands



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Charles-centric, Hurt Charles, M/M, POV Charles, POV First Person, Poor Charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebrands/pseuds/firebrands
Summary: You're peeling a lemon like you were taught to do it, and you garnish the martinis with the rind. They're exquisite, and we end up toeing off our shoes and sitting by the fire, drinking straight from the shaker, the taste of lemons and vodka still heady on our lips. It's accidental, the way I brush against your thoughts, but I'm relieved to find that I'm not alone in the slight shame of enjoying your company.This is sort of like a letter that Charles writes to Erik without ever sending, and an autobiography, of sorts.





	Landlocked Blues

People (who know) always assume that I know everything. They're not entirely wrong; one of the perks of telepathy is finding out anything, and eventually, everything, comes easy.

-

I was ten when I discovered that I actually was telepathic. I, along with millions of other children, liked to play with the idea of it, but—it's so vivid in my mind, that day. My classmates and I were playing hide and seek, and I counted up to fifty before looking around the playground. Then it just hit me: John, hiding under the slide, Kate, behind those shrubs, I knew where _every single person_ was, and what they were thinking, and I knew. I remember shivering with the idea. I remember running under the slide and tapping John's shoulder, saying: "found you!" and him scowling and saying: "you're no fair!" I couldn't do anything but smile, my tongue still unused to the idea of lying. 

I knew then that was something wrong, and that no one else could ever fix it.

-

The governess leaves after a week. She says she feels unstable, says she forgets pockets of the day, says she needs _time_. What she doesn't tell my mother is that she forgets the time she spends with me, forgets why she's holding a glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches as she stops in front of my room.

It begins to take its toll on my mother, as well—she stays home instead of going to her charity balls, her hand warm on my back as she answers the phone. "Oh darling, I'm sorry, that was tonight? I seemed to have completely forgotten."

I was eleven. I knew that it was a fallacy. Still, nothing could replace the way my mother looked at me the way I always wanted her to.

-

Her name is Raven. She's—she teaches me how to lie. She tells me that reading minds isn't right. I was twelve and she was eight. I tactlessly told her that having blue skin wasn't right, either.

We didn't speak for a week (it felt like a month, though). We never bring it up anymore, but there were unspoken promises that were exchanged that day.

-

There has always been this desperate need inside me that makes me want to help people. It's—it's weird, and a tiny bit patronizing, and a whole lot stupid, in retrospect. Still: I have a fundamental need to help people, and I should have known that one day that would shoot me in the back.

-

My abilities have made me into a subconscious cheat. I can't help it, except I should. I imagine labeled boxes. I place thoughts and emotions in them. I imagine a padlock. I imagine a filing cabinet.

It helps, sometimes. Sometimes, I forget. Sometimes I slip up and forget all about the labeled boxes and I get _angry_ , sometimes.

-

The first time I— _sense_ you, I feel steady weight pool at the bottom of my stomach, a mix of anger and pain that makes my toes curl. You remind me of barbed wires and needles, your anger coming in waves. My words wash over you and your skin is like cooled metal. I could not help but want to help you, despite knowing.

In the months to come, a lot of my sentiments wound up sounding the same: I can't stop myself from helping you, despite knowing.

-

I like to think that it is you to blame for my slow descent into alcoholism. I like to think that it is you to blame for a lot of things, but I don't want to delve into that. Not yet. Maybe, if I'm honest, not ever.

It's a Thursday night and you discover the liquor cabinet. We're not too different from the teenagers, hiding on the other side of the house, my head heavy, your fingers poised around a cigarette. It starts there. The next thing I know, we're in the study.

You're peeling a lemon like you were taught to do it, and you garnish the martinis with the rind. They're exquisite, and we end up toeing off our shoes and sitting by the fire, drinking straight from the shaker, the taste of lemons and vodka still heady on our lips. It's accidental, the way I brush against your thoughts, but I'm relieved to find that I'm not alone in the slight shame of enjoying your company.

-

The mind of a telepath is a crazed one. This much, you know. What you don't is that sometimes I fear my memories aren't my own, that somehow, someone else's first kiss has bled on to my thoughts, the nostalgic feel of soft lips, not my own.

-

This is what it's like to get sick: colors. Colors, then the spaces between colors. It's a very traditionalist type of thing to see-feel, but there it is. Everything was blurred and slow, and my body temperature destabilized under the duvet, my feet warm, my neck cold. You came in with soup. You told me to get better. (I will never understand why people say things that are easier said than done, especially when they know it is.) 

You rubbed the back of my hand. Your hands were cold, like a lamppost in winter. I opened my eyes and everything was desaturated. I told you that I could feed myself, that I could do what I needed to do without your help. You left, but we both knew you should have stayed.

(I look back on this and see it for the foreshadowing that it was. I should have known. Sometimes, I understand, that I've always known, but always failed to acknowledge it.)

-

"You're terrible at telling jokes." I tell you this over our second game of chess, our limbs loose, your mouth a half-moon before closing on the rim of the glass. 

You shrug was non-committal as you swallowed your drink and proceed to check my king. "At least I'm not too bad at chess."

-

It was sunny outside, and Alex was calling Hank a bozo for climbing trees faster than him and Raven was picking apples while Sean stared at the glistening stones in the creek. We were in the kitchen, making lunch.

We both tried to stop ourselves from thinking too loudly. Our existence had suddenly centered around the idea of never getting caught. Of course, we were wrong to hope for secrecy.

A stray thought floated into my mind, and I closed my eyes and I breathed out slowly through my mouth, my hands poised over a half-cut orange.

"Charles," you said, and I felt your hand on my hip. I put down the knife. We felt each other's lips for the first time.

-

Of course I fell in love the little things about you, the greedy way you smoked your cigarettes, the yellowing stains in the valley between your fingers, the nicotine discoloring the area above your knuckles. I love the way your eyebrows meet when you read, the way you smile as I cross the division in the study then smooth them out.

Disgustingly enough, I love the way you smile at me, and the way only you can make me overcome the fear of proximity. 

I love how selfish you are. I love how your fingers feel on my arm. I love how you lick the spoon clean before you pass it to me when we share a half-gallon of ice cream.

-

You liked the way my hands felt on your chest. I liked the clean lines of your hips, the way your arms moved, the kiss on the side of my neck like an afterthought. You held my wrists and sucked on my collarbone.

Remembering hurts. It's only right that you share in this pain. Do you remember the cold slick of your fingers? The non-words that you managed to coax out of me? The feel of hot coffee sliding down your throat, mixing with my taste?

-

I taught you control, and a certain fear gripped me as you stopped them, how you made them move and how they exploded, loud and at a distance, like fireworks.

Fear, the sickening kind that grips you by the throat and has the gall to laugh, coursed through everyone's veins, through their thoughts, and my actions may not have been completely my own. I knew I was going to lose you. I knew you would never come back, would not spare me the pleasure of turning around.

You're gone in a puff of red smoke. The air is salty with tears and seawater, the sand leaving small circles on my hands. My legs, heavy and useless, memory a painful reminder.

I tried not to cry, but everyone else was, and I forgot, I forgot the little boxes with the labels, and you took the key to the padlock with you—my mind was a receptacle of emotion. I had no choice. I could not run away.

-

Jean's hair is red, but so unlike Raven's. She tells me that she can read minds. Her smile is broken, and she's tired of compartmentalizing. She wants me to teach her how to control herself.

I lie, I tell her that I can. I lie and tell her that it's not too difficult. We discuss this over breakfast and she takes the kettle from the stove without having to get up. It reminds me painfully of you, and how you liked to show off, sometimes.

I have abandoned the idea of boxes. Instead I imagine layers under the earth, like Dante's _Inferno_. You are at the bottom of it all, frozen, impenetrable, the perfect embodiment of suffering.

-

I saw you in a café today. You didn't recognize me and for a moment I thought it was a dream—shamelessly, I hoped it was. I hoped that you would turn to me and smile like you used to. You didn't, and that wasn't much of a surprise. We are so different now; Erik, and it has been so long since I've seen you, seen you smile. 

We are so different now. 

For a moment I like to imagine that I feel a flash of recognition somewhere along the still strong lines of your shoulders (you've learned to cloak yourself from me without the helmet, I'm sure Emma is to thank for that), something like yearning when you accidentally meet my eyes. We are so different, now, and I understand why you pretended not to recognize how blown up my pupils had become.

-

I once told you that true power lay between rage and serenity. I was right, of course, but I see the irony in it now. You, with your excessive anger, and me, fastidiously serene—for a moment, you allowed us to be indestructible. Now, we only seek to destroy each other. Together we were fluid, like water, and now, particles separated, we can no longer hope to be abrasive.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2011, just migrating fic from livejournal.


End file.
